The only important elements in any society are the artistic and the criminal, because they alone, by questioning the societyβs values, can force it to change.
Samuel R. DelanyRead
However much, as readers, we lose ourselves in a novel or story, fiction itself is an experience on the order of memory -not on the order of actual occurrence.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Fiction immerses us in experiences akin to memories rather than real events.
In this quote, Samuel R. Delany emphasizes that while reading fiction can deeply engage us and evoke strong emotions, the experiences we gain from it are not the same as those derived from real-life occurrences. Instead, they resemble memories, highlighting the unique way that stories shape our thoughts and feelings through imaginative engagement rather than direct experience.
Themes
FictionMemoryExperienceReadingStories
In practice
Example use cases
In a book club discussion about the impact of literature.
More from Samuel R. Delany
All quotes βHow we treat our invalids - our mad, our physically or mentally compromised family members - does tell you something about who we are politically, historically, culturally.
Samuel R. DelanyRead
It is a magic book. Words mean things. When you put them together they speak. Yes, sometimes they flatten out and nothing they say is real, and that is one kind of magic. But sometimes a vision will rip up from them and shriek and clank wings clear as the sweat smudge on the paper under your thumb. And that is another kind.
Samuel R. DelanyRead
The poems ... are moments when I had the intensity to see, and the energy to build, some careful analog that completed the seeing. ... All I have been left is the exhausting habit of trying to tack up the slack in my life with words.
Samuel R. DelanyRead
I spend a lot of time thinking, if not daydreaming. People think of me as a genre writer, and a genre writer is supposed to be prolific. Since that's how people perceive me, they have to say I'm prolific. But I don't find that either complimentary or accurate.
Samuel R. DelanyRead
All too often, when creative people pick out someone else's creative work as an inspiration, what they end up with is very, very far from the original.
Samuel R. DelanyRead
Similar quotes
Sentences must stir in a book like leaves in a forest, each distinct from each despite their resemblance.
Gustave FlaubertRead
Even though I read voraciously as a child, I never saw myself in books. Without narratives to expand my ideas of who I could be, I accepted the stories others told me about myself, stories which diminished and belittled me and people like me. I want to write against that.
Jesmyn WardRead
The novel as a form is usually seen to be moral if its readers consider freedom, individuality, democracy, privacy, social connection, tolerance and hope to be morally good, but it is not considered moral if the highest values of a society are adherence to rules and traditional mores, the maintenance of hierarchical relationships, and absolute ideas of right and wrong. Any society based on the latter will find novels inherently immoral and subversive.
Jane SmileyRead
The only sensible ends of literature are, first, the pleasurable toil of writing; second, the gratification of one's family and friends; and lastly, the solid cash.
Nathaniel HawthorneRead
The problem with most genre fantasy is that it's not nearly fantastic enough. It's escapist, but it can't escape.
China MievilleRead
I demand that my books be judged with utmost severity, by knowledgeable people who know the rules of grammar and of logic, and who will seek beneath the footsteps of my commas the lice of my thought in the head of my style.
Louis AragonRead